Weeknotes for User Centred Design in the Regions 1/4/22
“We aren’t bad people trying to be good, we are ill people trying to be well” — Community Member A
This weeknote isn’t a weeknote as such. In fact it’s more of a daynote as its going to focus on Wednesday 30/3 and a 1 day Design Sprint I was privileged to be part of.
Background
Part of my role is to find ways to support the adoption of User Centred Design in the Regions of the NHS. The North West Region’s Dr Ayesha Rahim got in touch early doors and said something like ‘we want to do more, come play over here.’
After a couple of presentations on User Centred Design I think we all agreed that it seemed like it had merit but me just being on transmit the whole time would get old very quickly.
So we thought why not try and do a design sprint with members of the team and in a community asset with a seldom heard group. (PLEASE NOTE, the reason anyone is seldom heard is because of us. Not them!)
The challenge for the day was….
Can we take a team through a complete design cycle in one day on a live problem?
A 1 Day Design Sprint
I’ll talk a little about what we did and then finish this post off with some of the stories we heard.
We all met at The Well in Morecambe — a place that supports people recovering from addiction. Let me take a moment to say thank you to The Well and their Community Members that spent the day with us. It is honestly one of the most humbling experiences of my life to spend time with this group of people. Their generosity to us and each other, their honesty and lack of judgement of others in the presence of the demons they face every hour of every day was genuinely awe inspiring.
What did we do?
The (somewhat loose agenda as I had no idea how it would go) was
- Understand
- Do some group discussions and take notes (discussion guides provided)
- try and show all the steps in a person’s support — journey maps (templates provided)
- Maybe some one pagers hoping to capture pertinent bits of a person’s life — personas(templates provided)
- See if there’s any common things that crop up — Affinity sort
2. Define
- Vote on the things we all think are important
- Do some ‘How might we… statements
3. Ideas
- Get groups to match ideas to statements
4. Prototype
- Groups draw/write/make whatever they think could work
5. Test
- We feedback to the everyone to see what people think
We were trying to see if having some kind of hybrid training — actual real life design stuff would
a) help the North West team with their UCD endeavours
b) genuinely provide some insight for their Patient Portal programme.
Some things that happened?
Well I had fun and I cried. For me the day was a success. However, I’m waiting for feedback from Community Members from the Well and from the North West Team to see if it was valuable. I’ll keep you updated either way.
At the beginning when 21 of us were cramped into a very small room and introducing ourselves, one community member said,
“Can I just mention something? I suffer from [a condition that I won’t name here] and I might get a bit panicked. I find if I tell people that I’m a little nervous it takes the power from it.” Community Member B
Then suddenly, 2 or 3 NHS colleagues genuinely spoke up and mentioned that they were slightly nervous because no one has been able to do face to face stuff like this for a long time. We all shared a moment there and (I think) everyone felt more together because of it. Thankyou, Community Member B
A little later we heard about stories of people who had overdosed and needed resuscitating 4 times in one week but still had to wait 8 weeks to get any form of treatment.
We heard about how it took one person every ounce of strength and courage they had to make that first step to say ‘help’. And they were told they had contacted the wrong service. Emotionally and financially it cost them everything they had to seek help and we closed the door. That person did their bit. We did not!
We heard how someone has to tell their story 6 times in A&E when they broke their collar bone. How they had been advised they couldn’t stop drinking because it would kill them and were not heard by A&E. After 18 hours of not being seen they ripped their drip out and left, without treatment for the collar bone.
We also heard that Community Members talk about love, life, loss, acceptance and greater powers. Huge words. How relationships keep them alive. How this community of peers have a bond that transcends. How lived experience, for them, is a keystone to trust and how the health system talks down to them. And yet none of them showed any resentment.
“Me on my own is just one person. But me and you together, Pete. that’s a greater power.” — community member C (I had to leave the conversation for a moment as I was crying at this point)
An Idea
We went in with some thoughts about a Patient Portal and whether or not it might be a good thing. After we went through the exercises one of the ideas that the community members came up with was.
“A QR Code on the bottom of your appointment letter that a bus can scan and you get a free trip for the 20 mile round trip to the mental health appointment. If I ever had the £7 for the journey I would’ve spent it on vodka.”
Alone we never would have come up with something like that.
Side Note
There was a spontaneous concert from Ayesha Rahim and Linda Vernon. Where they played guitar and sang a two part harmony to Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. We all kind of sat there sharing this wonderful moment. Secretly I think they’ve been practicing for months!!
Anyway… I’ll be writing up the full findings from the day and sharing with the North West Team.
If this approach seems to have some value and people are interested in it then I’ll pull together some materials of what we did, what I would do different next time etc.
Thank you to:
The Well and the Community Members for your openness and trust
North West team for getting involved so enthusiastically
Laura and Uma for taking a leap with me when the plan was fuzzy at best :-)
Stay safe everyone
Pete